Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed a recent sentiment shift on HN?

Maybe, just maybe, the absurd carelessness of DOGE and the tariffs were enough to make some people rethink their previous beliefs.

Probably not.

But it's a nice fantasy.

There are two trends:

- Higher interest rates

- Everything is AI

There are simply less startups, less interesting programming topics, fewer things to learn or look forward to, and even all of the big venture capital bros have switched their interests to politics.

The simple concept of HN is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting." ... and frankly, there's not much else for "good hackers" to be interested in right now.

I think the rightward blip is just a reality of HN - people don't come here to get hivemind takes like from Reddit. They generally want something contrarian and more thought out. But I think in the long run even contrarian positions reach their conclusions against reality.

It's because the election ended and the astroturfing fulfilled it's purpose.

Well, if HN primarily and accurately reflects the mood of US workers and industries, and the populace of the US made a strong swing to the red/right over the last couple years,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/p...

then you’d expect a red shift in posts and responses.

If external agents want to manipulate HN opinion away from that right shift, then you’d expect posts, flagging, upvote/downvote, and posting patterns by such agents with an objective of achieving that.

I’ve seen evidence of both.

But these are all just bits on a screen…I try not to get too hung up on seeing rabbits in clouds. The HN community is a tiny slice of the US, much less the World. I try not to let any echo chamber distort the larger picture, so that I don’t make the same political errors in judgement that led to the recent Democrats performance failures in the last election.

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

I think a lot of people have realised that their emperors have no clothes.

I have noticed more downvoting in general of comments compared to pre-2022 or so, and it's not like it's trollish or bad responses being downvoted. It's an eggshell thing. Comments even get downvoted when there are replies in agreement. It's not a left-right thing. Even apolitical stuff gets downvoted. Comments about health, obesity, diet tend to get a lot of downvotes if they question conventional wisdom (obesity rates at record highs, yet any commentary or advice that deviates from convention or expertise is downvoted even these experts with their generic advice cannot actually help the majority of people lose weight).

HN goes through its phases, which often coincide what is happening in the real world.

Off the top of my head, a few of the major shifts happened when:

- COVID-19 sent everyone home (suddenly a lot of graybeards disappeared)

- Elon Musk bought Twitter

- Donald Trump was inaugurated

There was also a time in the past when Facebook, Google, and Twitter employees would poke fun at the secrecy of Apple employees because they would almost never post on HN. Today, all of the big tech employees are either absent or in stealth mode. Which is a shame, because this forum has lost a lot of useful insight and institutional knowledge.

I don't know what HN's traffic or demographics are like, but my guess is that it skews a lot younger, a lot less experienced, and a lot more high school/college than it did ten years ago.

Yes, the Elon Musk super fans have gone quiet. There was a time when Musk and his fans were riding a wave of enthusiasm, but with Tesla and Starship problems they've dialed it back. Silicon Valley people were riding it too with tech billionaires standing at the podium inauguration day and soon after announcing the half a trillion Stargate AI program. Things are more muted now. Back to normal as you say.